What is PBS and how does it operate at CBPS?
PBS stands for Positive Behaviour Support and is an operational framework that aims to improve student academic and behaviour outcomes by ensuring all students have access to the most effective and accurately implemented instructional and behavioural practices and interventions possible.
It is a research-based process that is proven to create safer and more effective schools. PBS relies on organisational change strategies to improve the social culture, learning and teaching environment in schools, and to provide the individual behaviour supports needed to achieve academic and social success for all students.
Students in our school come from many different backgrounds and cultures that view “behaviour” differently. We cannot assume that students know how to behave appropriately when at school. We have a high number of students who have not been taught school behaviours at home, and who therefore make mistakes at school.
Consequently, we must teach our students how to behave at school to ensure that they do make better choices. PBS views inappropriate behaviour in the same manner that problems in reading or math are viewed…as a skill deficit. When a skill deficit exists, we must teach the appropriate skill. We view behaviour infractions as errors requiring teaching, rather than character faults to be fixed by punishment.
Some Core Beliefs about Behaviour:
Behaviour is a form of communication
Behaviour is functional; it is not good or bad.
Students are not “born with bad behaviour”
Students do not learn better ways of behaving when given aversive consequences for their problem behaviours (Alberto and Troutman, 2001; Sulzer-Azaroff and Mayer, 1994; Walker et al., 1996).
Recurring misbehaviour happens for a reason (some students learn that problem behaviour is the best way to meet their needs)
Identifying the function or purpose of the behaviour allows us to respond and intervene more effectively.
Classrooms where students behave appropriately do not happen by accident – the adults in them have cleverly designed the physical environment, explicitly taught students appropriate behaviour, have excellent classroom management practices and constantly modify their own behaviour to get the response they want from students.
How we change behaviour in a PBS school:
Recognise we can’t make students learn or behave. In PBS there is a strong focus on antecedents, the things we can do as adults to support students to be successful in achieving behavioural outcomes.
We can create environments that increase the likelihood that students will learn and behave.
Environments that increase this likelihood are guided by a core curriculum which is implemented with consistency and fidelity and give consideration to:
- Design and layout of the physical environment
- Explicit teaching of appropriate behaviour
- Opportunity to regularly practise behaviour in the natural environment
- Fostering positive relationships with students
- Data driven classroom management practices
- The constant modification of our own behaviour to elicit the desired response from students
- Frequent, specific, skill focussed positive reinforcement
CBPS Three Tier Continuum of Behaviour Support
PBS builds a continuum of supports for staff and students. It is supported by a three-tier model. At each level (or tier) there is an emphasis on outcomes in the form of agreed expectations for student and staff behaviour, and data to guide decision-making about what practices should be put in place to support student learning and social behaviour. There is equal emphasis on the system supports that will be needed to build fluency with new or revised practice among all teachers and staff within the school.
CBPS Behaviour Matrix
Our matrix is a set of expectations and specific replacement behaviours that are the basis for our school’s social behaviour curriculum. Students need to be taught these behaviours. The matrix highlights the behaviour expectation of students in high frequency places or situations. A copy of the behaviour matrix should be clearly visible within all classrooms in the school and used as a teaching tool.
Staff at CBPS created a Behaviour Expectations Matrix based around four core values:
Be Safe
Be A Learner
Be Resilient and Strong
Be Respectful
Be Your Best